Qualified!

In sports or in politics, if you don't put a team on the field, you can't win. Last week, when the bell rang, and qualifying ended, Georgia Dems had done just that. Was it perfect? No. There are the issues with the Augusta Senate seat and some last minute drama that caught some by surprise, but over all - this year is much, much better than at least the last two cycles. (My day job gets in the way of counting the beans any further back than that.)

Here are some of the interesting numbers:

• We have candidates running in every statewide race. Too many in some, but that's the breaks. Seven Democratic women are running for statewide office. Seven.
• In total, 83, yes eighty-three, Democratic women qualified to run for state-level office. That has to be some sort of record, but again, the day job interferes with the counting.
• We have Democrats running in 119 of the 180 House seats. That's 23 more than in 2008.
• We have 45 Democratic candidates for Republican seats in the House; there are only 12 Republicans for Democratic seats. Republicans are running in 120 House districts, but let's remember that a lot more of them are defending seats currently held or recently held by a fleeing member.
• Before the snafu in Powell's seat, we had candidates in 35 Senate districts, the same as 2008.

It's not perfect, but we made progress. For that, let me send props to WIN endorsed incumbent Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield who led recruitment efforts for the House. I hope that she, who worked from the wee hours of the morning until the wee hours of the morning, is taking a well-earned breather. When you see her, thank her.

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Can We Talk?

Should the Democratic Party of Georgia be involved in candidate recruitment efforts, or not? There has been a lot of buzz on the blogs, on the ground and among donors about the need for the DPG to do a better job of candidate recruitment. (I agree, by the way, that the effort needs to be better organized and ongoing.) There has also been a lot of complaining about the perception that the DPG actively recruited a candidate into the senate race, and the Party was left in the position of defending allegations-that proved to be false-about their advocacy for a particular candidate in that contested primary. I'm not trying to re-ignite that fight, but this opens up a serious question.

If the Party actively recruits candidates, how do we do that and then say, "well, sorry, if you have primary opposition, you are on your own?" It's not a piece of cake to run for office, and in case no one noticed, there is not a long line of qualified candidates banging down the doors. How do we get folks to run and then abandon them when someone else qualifies?

The question is, how does the Party balance the need to recruit with the need to remain neutral in primaries? Is that even possible?

Talk among yourselves...

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What's With the Georgia GOP?

In a tough recruiting year, Georgia Republicans blamed the salaries for legislators, while Georgia Democrats, predictably, just blamed each other. When candidate qualifying ended in Georgia on Friday, there was a lot of grumbling on the blogs about the recruiting efforts of one political party. Sure, one party failed to field candidates in all thirteen congressional races, while the other will compete in every single one. One party had fielded fewer state House and Senate candidates than the other. One party challenged far fewer incumbents than the other. Trouble is, the party with the poorest recruiting record is the Georgia GOP, yet, the complaining has been about the DPG, with Democrats providing the grist for the mill.

Consider this:

• Democrats qualified great candidates in every congressional race while Republicans will only compete in eleven of thirteen.
• 145 Democrats will compete in House races, while only 136 Republicans are running. Despite their majority status, Republicans are competing in only 17 more House districts than Democrats.
• 50 Democrats will compete in state Senate races, while only 48 Republicans will run. Again, despite their majority status, Republicans will compete in only three more Senate districts than Democrats.
• When it comes to challenging incumbents, Democrats clean the GOP's clock. We will challenge 23 incumbent House members while Republicans will challenge only 11 incumbent Democrats. Republicans will challenge 5 incumbent Democratic senators while Democrats drew targets on the backs of 14 incumbent Republican senators.
• Republicans have failed to challenge incumbent Democrats in a number of marginal districts, including seats held by Amy Carter, Ellis Black and Mike Cheokas.

Georgia Republicans hold majorities in the House and Senate along with the majority of the constitutional offices. Their efforts are really embarrassing considering that the Georgia GOP enjoys a substantial cash advantage over the DPG. You'd think that with the money in the bank, a Governor with a 60+% approval rating and virtually unlimited access to lobbyist dollars, the Georgia GOP would've done a better job. You'd think that they would've recruited folks to run in marginal districts (Amy Carter, Ellis Black and Mike Cheokas are all unopposed). If the Democrats had all those things in our favor and had this kind of showing, Kidd and Company would've been run out of town on a rail. Well, if we had rail, which we don't because the GOP led General Assembly couldn't manage to address transportation. I digress.

I understand Republicans wanting to draw the media focus away from their dismal efforts; I just don't understand why Democrats were helping them do it. I'm the first to acknowledge that Democrats need to do a better job of recruiting, but there is a myth floating around that candidate recruitment was a one week marathon for Democrats, capped with an ill-advised robo-call. Whoever's floating that story doesn't know what they don't know. The truth is that many of us have been actively involved in candidate recruitment for the last two years. The truth is that many hours were invested by the Party, the Caucus and various Democratic organizations like Red Clay and Georgia's WIN List. We called, we surveyed, we trained, and, yes, sometimes we begged, pleaded and cajoled to get quality candidates in races. I know this because I have been involved in the process. And, yes, just like the Republicans, during the last month, those efforts were kicked into high gear to get people who we had reached out to over the course of time in place to qualify. And, yes, there are races where we wanted to field candidates and did not, but in many of those races, we were able to identify really quality candidates whose names you will see on the ballot in 2010. We have lots of great Democrats running this year. Now, admittedly, we need to get some real estate agents for some of these folks so that we can compete in more districts, but not only are we running more folks, this is an absolutely fantastic crop of candidates.

Could we have done better? Sure, and next cycle, with your help maybe we will. Now is the time to look around you, or look in the mirror, and help find great candidates to run in 2010.

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Thanks, Insider Advantage

Insider Advantage Georgia has posted extremely helpful downloadable spread sheets that detail the qualifying results in the Georgia House and Senate. For all the talk about our recruiting (more on that in the morning), there's some good news for Democrats.

If I can count this time of night:

In the Georgia Senate, Democrats fielded 14 challengers to incumbent Republicans, while the R's qualified just 5 challengers to incumbent Democrats.

In the Georgia House, Democrats fielded 23 challengers to incumbent Republicans, while Republicans qualified 11 challengers to take on incumbent Democrats.

Of course, we have ground to make up in both chambers-ground that was lost long before Jane Kidd took office, by the way-but it looks as though we are actually contesting the most seats.

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This is the Moment

If you are a Democrat and live in Georgia, there might never be a better time to run for office. Qualifying for legislative races is just two weeks away. We expect unprecedented Democratic turnout in November. In addition to the interest in the Presidential race, we will have a hotly contested senate race-both will drive Democrats to the polls. So, come on, you know you want to do it.

Run.

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New Year's Resolutions for the DPG

It's that time of the year again. You know, the time when the guilt over the indulgences of Christmas creeps up on us, and we resolve to swear off sugar, get back to the gym and in general tame one or more of our vices. Seldom do New Year's Resolutions "take", but, still, this is a good time for assessment and an opportunity for change. Since change is something that the DPG must do in order to become effective, over the next few days, I'm going to post a few suggested New Year's resolutions for the DPG. I do this recognizing that this is an organization to which I, and many of you, belong. So, this is less about what I think "they" should do, and more about what I think "we" should do. I will post one resolution a day for the next few days. Please chime in with your comments and your own proposed "resolutions" for the party. I will move the best of the lot to the front page.

Here's mine for today:

The Democratic Party of Georgia will do a better job of building relationships, and we will no longer neglect our best 'natural resource' for candidate recruitment.

Instead, we will reach out to locally elected Democrats and Democratic organizations in all 159 Georgia counties (sheriff's, county commissioners, school board members and others). We will come to the table with resources to help build mutually beneficial relationships, better coordinate candidate recruitment, field planning and GOTV efforts.

Now, what's your suggestion?

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New Website Launched!

Tonight, we launched the website for my campaign for DPG Candidate Recruitment Vice-Chair. Many thanks to all who helped to create the site. You know who you are! And thanks, once again, to Melanie, over at Blog for Democracy for tonight's post announcing the site launch. The support and offers of help I have received from people all over the state has been gratifying, to say the very least. The best part is that I know that all of those who are helping me now are also invested in helping with the work of recruiting great candidates and electing Democrats!

I hope that you will take a moment to check out the site , learn a little bit more about me and about my ideas for candidate recruitment, and sign up to be listed as a supporter. I'd love to hear your ideas for how we can do a better job of electing Democrats in Georgia.

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